


Monday, 8:15

by orphan_account



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: AU, F/M, High School AU, M/M, Multichapter, Slow Burn, will add tags as applicable
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 20:02:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17925401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: High school isn't for everyone. Especially when you're newly broke, thousands of miles from home, and all out of friends.





	Monday, 8:15

**Author's Note:**

> I just want to lay a little ground work for the premise of this story before it picks up. I will also add notes at the end.  
> The Roses move to Schitt's Creek just like in canon, but while the kids are in high school and with a few details changed. I still attempt to keep true to form as much as any AU can be, so hopefully you all are able to enjoy.

Dean Martin once said in song, “You can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking, or for the rude look in your eye.” But Dean Martin, as handsome, as brilliant, as famous as he may have been, could not have possibly known David Rose. If he had, he never would have dared to make such a claim. David’s facial expressions, his quiet, sometimes secret musings, his outlook on life could all have been seen as extreme. Not always negative, but you know how it is. People hate the things they cannot understand.

David had grown up with a guard around him. He had dreamt of his life after high school, life as an adult, life in Soho, where his parents had promised him their barely-used loft adjacent to one of the most popular gallery locations in the tristate area. He could then express himself, he believed, by using the adversity and the challenges that he had faced in his seventeen years thus far and turning it into art. Performance art, he thought, since he wasn’t much for paint. His clothes were much too expensive to taint with oil-based colors. Until those days came, though, he’d go to school in just a couple of months, finish his senior year, avoid anyone whom he planned to leave behind when he left, and take advantage of any and all sexual opportunities. Of course, that last plan had always been in place since he’d discovered the joys of the human body in junior high.

David’s parents didn’t expect their son to have trouble growing up. They gave him the best of the best, gave him all the freedom he wanted and all the coddling he needed. When he was bullied in school, they convinced him that those kids were just jealous, and then they would buy him a new coat or a new car or a new trip to Ibiza for two weeks to help him forget about it. Maybe it had just been too long since they’d been in touch with the real way of the world, but for some reason, Johnny and Moira Rose were convinced that they had done the right thing by both of their children, and especially by the one child they worried about: David.

His younger sister, Alexis, was not without her own issues. But she was as independent and carefree in the world as David was anxious and insecure about it. She had learned to demand what she wanted from the world, and to expect nothing less. And as she was rich, beautiful, and fearless, she was able to achieve virtually anything that she wished. So sure, the Roses had their worries about her as well. But it was more about worrying which car she’d take to Bowie’s house for the weekend or worrying about whether she’d find a way to replace the booze she’d stolen before their next family dinner party. Sending one of the staff for it at the last minute could be such a bother when there was so much to be done to prepare the house for company. And then while they let their worries for her fall to the wayside each night, Alexis herself could make her own plans for the future. Maybe something in PR. Maybe something where she could meet Chris Evans, make him fall in love with her, live off his wealth forever. Something like that. She hadn’t really decided yet, and she knew she had time and enough success of her own to live off of for now.

This never bothered David. He was happy for his sister, happy that at least one of them was finding their way in the world with relative ease. He was glad she was seeing more options than the number of Stavroses and Bowies and Antonios of the world. She was everything he wished he could be, but as she pursued being who she wanted to be, he found himself worrying that much more that she was going to throw away her family and future for travel and fun that would all be up once she’d burned through every corner of the world. And at this rate, that wouldn’t take long. And where would that leave him? Stranded in a neighborhood he barely knew running some sort of business all on his own with whatever friends he managed to make out there on the East Coast, if he could even manage to do that at all.

As it happened, he wouldn’t have to consider this conundrum for long.

It happened on a Tuesday morning of all mornings. David was taming his unruly hair into the perfect shape after cursing himself for not drying it before bed the night before. Alexis was putting the final touches on her lip stain. Moira and Johnny were discussing the day’s itinerary on a video call with their assistants, which they had always insisted on doing together so that they would feel more connected to one another in the midst of the chaos their schedules brought. The California sun was glimmering through the stained glass walls of the easternmost vestibule. If they hadn’t known any better, and they soon would, they’d say it was a gorgeous morning that foreshadowed an average day in the life of the wealthiest family for three square miles.

Alexis and David heard it first. Their rooms were closer to the front of the house, which is where the federal agents had entered. David left his room, watching as the staff raced frantically toward their parents’ suite to inform them of what was happening. Agents in cheap jackets were already appraising sculptures and paintings and gold-inlay picture frames and removing them from the wall. And then Alexis left her room, standing doe-eyed in the threshold as she fell speechless at the sight of their actions.

It was all over so quickly. Everything they knew and loved was gone. Everything they had saved for, worked for, held dear, showed off, identified with. All of it was gone. They were given a few moments only to take what was essential to them – clothes, toiletries, sentimental objects that held little to no monetary value – before being informed that their spacious estate would also be held in federal custody before the evening arrived. As would all their property, including the loft in Soho. And all the vehicles, including the Lambo David had received as a sixteenth birthday gift and the BMW Alexis had been gifted by the lead singer of a failing but desperate boy band just six months before.

David and Alexis could barely listen as their lawyer explained what was happening. Unlike their parents, this life was the only one the kids had ever known. Being told to pack up and move to a ridiculous town in a location with which none of them were familiar to attend a public school that was, most likely, underfunded and overcrowded, was enough to send Alexis into a fit of sorts as she messaged her friends to see which one could let her crash with them until she could finalize some sort of emancipation from her parents so that they couldn’t force her to move away. None of them answered anything more than an OMG or a sad face. David sat silently, head in hands, wondering what life would be like for a boy like him in a town like Schitt’s Creek. Not that he had any idea what a town like Schitt’s Creek even was or if that was even the town’s true name, which he was doubting. After all, who in the hell would name a town that? And who the hell would move to a town with that name? Other than them, of course. And he was sure they’d be able to work something out before that happened.

________________________________________________________________________

The town was pretty much what they’d all expected. Something out of a B horror film, something that couldn’t possibly be real. The most elaborate prank George Clooney had ever played on them, maybe. But this didn’t smell like Clooney. No, this smelled more like Randy Quaid after his third failed attempt at entering Disneyland on New Year’s Eve 2015, which the Roses remembered well and wished they could forget. This was, like that fateful night, a complete disaster. But unlike that night, this one probably wouldn’t end with cocktails on the rooftop of Bob Iger’s house.

The arrangement wasn’t ideal. The Rose kids had never shared a bedroom, and neither had slept in a twin bed since they were five years old. The room was drafty, the walls thin, the staff… well, the staff was just one single older lady whose niece, she said, would help on occasion with cleaning the rooms. David doubted this supposed niece existed at all. The weather here was odd – sunny one day, rainy the next, summer breeze to winter chill within a week’s time. The mayor of the town was a trailer park caricature, or so David and Alexis assumed as they had never actually seen a trailer park in real life. But perhaps most depressing here was the school they would be attending. Schitt’s Creek High School, a single-structure complex which had needed a new roof for at least ten years now and whose student body, much to the Roses’ dismay, wouldn’t know fashion if it dropped in on gym class and shouted at them.

On day one, Alexis and David packed the essentials. Alexis brought her ipod, her MAC kit, her Nokia, her nail polish, and a picture of her most recent long-distance boyfriend, Stavros, to tape in her locker. David brought his MotoRazr and a cashmere cardigan to keep on hand in case the school was as drafty as their new home.

They both dressed the part, too. They wanted the school to know that this was all just temporary for them. Alexis’s story was that her mother was researching the role of a lifetime, and that the whole family was living in character for a year. David’s story was the truth, but with the added story of how he had a sure thing waiting for him in Upper Manhattan after graduation. A gallery where his parents’ connections would put him in charge, and a loft space big enough for lavish parties with all the celebrities he definitely still knew and definitely kept in touch with and who definitely did not cut their family off once the news broke that they’d lost everything. Both kids thought they’d be believable, and since Alexis was a junior and David was a senior, neither imagined that anyone would ever hear both stories and somehow surmise the bare truth from that.

Bravely, Alexis and David faced the double doors leading into the building. Both took a deep breath, Alexis because she was ready to get this school year over and done with. David because he could not possibly have been less ready. They looked at each other, and Alexis reached her arm behind David and rubbed his back.

“Ready?” She asked.

David nodded. “Nope.” He closed his eyes and pursed his lips.

“C’mon. I’m not doing this without you.” Alexis took his hand, and she led him through the doors.

The two of them stopped just a few steps inside and looked around. Terribly handwritten banners of all sorts hung on every wall. How was this possible on the first day of school? But then they realized these were signs from previous years, and none of them were taken down probably because whatever was on the walls underneath them was somehow worse. The ceiling was peeling and stained, which was when they realized how badly the roof needed repair. The floor was a pale blue linoleum that had broken in the corners. Still, dozens of students bustled around them on their way to their classrooms. No one seemed to notice them. No one welcomed them. No one said a word to them. And it was just then that the siblings realized just how terribly they’d need each other over the next nine months.

“Alexis?” David asked quietly.

“Yeah, David?” her voice, likewise, was low and careful.

“The smell in here. Is that…”

“Cheese?” she finished. “Yes, David. I think it is.”

“How much do you wanna bet that there’s no cheese in here and that’s just the way everything smells?”

Alexis laughed, especially when she saw the smile on her brother’s face. “How much do you want to bet that’s our lunch today?”

“Like, just cheese? Like nothing else but just a giant slab of cheese or something?”

“Sure, why not?”

“I’ll take that bet,” David agreed.

Just then, they seemed to realize they were still holding onto each other. They let go, and Alexis took a step toward the hall opposite where David was to go.  
“You’re going to be fine,” David called to her.

She looked back, but kept walking. “I know. And so are you.”

And as much as David wanted to believe that, he could not stay his doubts. Taking another breath in, he faced the other hall and began his trek.

Nine months, and he was out of here. He could do that. He could probably do that.

**Author's Note:**

> I just want to remind you all that this is a multi-chapter slow burn fic. I'll be introducing almost everyone at some point, and I will be exploring multiple relationships between multiple characters. Rest assured, though, that this is a David/Patrick fic at its heart. Thanks for reading!


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